ludossier

Gosh, two issues arriving within weeks! I barely finished reading the previous issue, when I got the new one yesterday. This time, there is a special section of short reviews of game expansions; most don’t fare too well in the reviewers’ opinions. Also, Friedemann Friese’s game Die 3 Gebote received two 3/10 scores! I have never seen such low scores in spielbox.

The magazine comes with a small expansion for Carcassonne, by one of the magazine’s regular reviewers. Moreover, thinking of the future generation of gamers, the children’s section looks at games for 2-year olds. The issue’s contents is as follows, with underlined games receiving great reviews: Read more… »

Yesterday I had to miss the games club night due to work-related travel to Lancaster. It was nice to see familiar names on the way there, like Stockport, Manchester, Wigan, Bolton, and Preston, and remembering laying tracks between those cities when playing Brass (click on the image to enlarge). My hosts were intrigued when I told them about the game and asked me to bring it next time I go there. The trip was too short to do any sight-seeing, so I definitely must go up Lancashire some other time.

Coincidentally, a Brass tournament game took place yesterday, won by Steve. He played only 3 tournament games so far, winning also Princes of Florence and coming second in Age of Steam. Impressive! No wonder he’s currently second in the ranking, behind David, who has 9 points (and 2 games) more. My Brass tournament game is due in a couple of weeks. Fingers crossed…

Last Friday issue 5/2009 arrived, with a reader survey. Respondents enter a draw of free tickets and accommodation for Spiel 2010! Fingers crossed… The online web form allows to add our own comments, so I took the opportunity to tell the publishers that what I like most about the magazine are the historical articles, the interviews and the reports, not the game reviews. There is no review that can replace the plurality of opinions on BoardGameGeek and the spielbox reviews are actually 80% rule summary and 20% opinion. Not very helpful. Moreover, certain reviewers have a rather convoluted way of writing (to add on top of the convoluted sentence structure in German), which means I can sometimes hardly parse their sentences, let alone understand how the game works. I doubt a 25 year old magazine will change their structure, but I wish they reduce the number of pages dedicated to reviews and increase those with the kind of articles I can’t get anywhere else. One of the survey questions was whether we felt the reviews were too detailed, so there’s hope…

Moving on to the issue’s contents, it is as follows, with underlined games receiving great reviews: Read more… »